Sword Fighting Is Not What You Think | Hacker News Reader

Sword Fighting Is Not What You Think

thearma.org

22 pointsgoles12 comments

I think this would have done a lot better with some specific, positive examples of proper technique and moves, and less of “all of you are morons and only I know the truth.”

They may be right, but have put their readers on the defensive and provided no links or evidence to back their claims.

I remember reading in the past, mainly for samurai fights, there wasn't really much back and forth, you would hit your enemy once or twice and it would be over. This whole trading blows kind of thing was mostly bullshit to sell movies as actual fights wouldn't be very interesting as they would usually end very quickly.

Definitely agreed with the message needing some work. There are plenty of ARMA videos out there though that show what they do if you're interested. HEMA is the other term to look for. Apparently the ARMA guy in the referenced article doesn't have the best reputation according to this

( https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/ifg2ea/hema_the...)

I've done a small amount of fencing and all three swords (foil, epee, saber) have been so sportified as to be absolutely meaningless. It is good exercise, but feels pretty distant from any form of actual swordfighting and there are lots of rules that don't make a lot of sense to me. HEMA seems pretty cool as a more realistic alternative.

Author in their glorious pompousness specifically says everyone is wrong, so why should the observant reader trust such videos?

I interpreted the comment as meaning the article from said pompous author had no details as to what they meant by swordfighting. I was merely responding that they have a channel on YouTube you can look at.

The link I sent was to a reddit forum where folks talked about the history and controversy of the author that provides additional context.

Also, I felt this implies the proper-historically-correct-techniques are much better than the wrong-modern-impression-techniques, and would win in combat.

Makes sense, but it would be cool evidence to see simulated combat to test this.

I’ve seen comment threads like that on HN. Someone will make a dubious claim, and when challenged they’ll repeatedly say it’s not their job to educate us.

Hard to take someone with that attitude seriously.

For an alleged expert in sword fighting, this post is awfully short on details. I’ll note that the overwhelming majority of combat in premodern history is not one-on-one, and is instead between teams in a formation (typically each of whom have shields in addition to their weapons).

Bret Devereaux (oft featured on HN) recently finished up a series on the Roman and classical Hellenistic tactical systems; for a view of an army doing sword-based combat, check here [1].

[1]: https://acoup.blog/2024/02/09/collections-phalanxs-twilight-...

This was cool. Still not sure what sword fighting is but it's cool.

There are a lot of cool and funny videos on YT about and around the HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) folks.

Instructional are the vids of Blood and Iron.

this reads like it was written by Steven Seagal

People actually care about this? Really?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com